Photographic Exhibition | shadow and light | Ana Raquel Matos
Inauguration, February 16th, 6pm, FEUC entrance hall
Shadow and light
And there was a shadow. There are many worlds that are known or created in this way. As in a Chinese shadow theater, we see strength, mystery, drama, curiosity, amazement, hope or fear when the light turns around. Various gradations between platitude and volume can be added and ready-made ideas begin to evaporate. We look and we don't know if it's cloud, fog, sea, dew or salt. We look and we have to think if it's the beginning or end of the day, if it's the city we think we know, if it's urban or rural, if it's sadness or serenity, if it's stop or movement, if people meet or turn away. And even if we are the ones who are watching or if it is someone who is watching us. In the light of the shade, you rest in the summer trees, but if you think about it, you can also learn and change a lot throughout all the seasons of life.
André Brito Correia
february 2022
BIOGRAPHIC NOTE
Ana Raquel Matos was born on the last day of a summer month, in 1973, in the Wonderful Kingdom she shares with Miguel Torga, in Vila Real de Trás-os-Montes. Determined to understand what it would be like to live “beyond Marão”, she arrived in Coimbra in 1991. She made FEUC her starting point, where she began, in a window seat, to practice Wright Mills' sociological imagination. She chose to take up residence in Sociology, from her degree to her PhD, and that's where she still lives, as an Assistant Professor at FEUC and Researcher at CES.
The love for photography was born by the hand of her younger maternal uncle when she was just 13 years old. Today, she remembers those days, with the affection of an adult and the astonishment that she retains from adolescence, the successive moments when he reached out to her to lend her his latest model Canon, without collateral or recommendations.
As in the song, she walks around the world paying attention to colors she doesn't know the name of, walking around in the dark, but seeing everything framed.